What does it mean to prepare a document for imaging? If you’re dealing with day-forward scanning, then it’s probably just a matter of removing the staples and rubber bands. But with any degree of back-file scanning, the process is a lot more involved.
Removing the obstructions.
The most important aspect of doc prepping is removing the obstructions. Paper clips, staples, rubber bands, and other unscannable items can wreak havoc on your hardware, so we have to be meticulous in extracting them. While it is an unarguable truth that they must come out, let’s not jump into the process yet. We have to determine what happens when they come out.
All of those things add meaning and structure to your records. A staple might group documents in an application record. A binder clip might group several related applications. So as we remove them, we need to make sure we translate what those items meant to your records.
What humans see is not what computers see.
When we receive a box of documents, there may be anywhere between a few or dozens of files in it. Our physical storage conventions are pretty uniform and recognizable. We might see an accordion folder with manila folders inside. Or we might see binder clips in the folders. You know what all these things mean, but if we remove them hastily, a great deal of meaning is rent from your files.
The way we deal with this is to add pages to your documents that represent those items. We’ll go over your records in great detail before the project starts, and at that point, we’ll make decisions regarding how the boxes will be prepped. You might request that each stapled bunch will become one document with multiple pages. Or perhaps a binder clip with constitute a document. As the metal is taken out, a barcode (called a patch-T) will be inserted. This will tell the document scanner to create a new document.
When we’re finished, you’ll be given electronic files that are meaningful and structurally similar to your paper records. Depending on the files, adding patch-Ts could grow the volume of the box considerably, so care must be taken not to overload a box.
Prepping for indexing.
When it comes time to index your files, our indexers use a software that shows them the first page of a document so they can read the data and input it into the index fields. Sometimes, this data is not always front and center in paper records.
The doc preppers may be given rules regarding how to get that information to where it is easily readable by the indexer. If a manilla folder provides the primary indexing values, that folder might be cut in half and positioned such that the name on the tab is in a visible, predictable location. The back side of the folder is no longer important because the patch-T for the next record will effectively end the previous record. Slowly, we begin to see how our legacy conventions for organization and structure translate into a computer-readable format.